Saturday, January 15, 2005

Daily News Round Up (1/15/05)

Bank of America is urging its more than 175,000 employees to fill out an online survey about job satisfaction. Question 64 asks respondents to "indicate which one of the following best describes yourself."

Clicking on the pull-down menu provides four choices:

-- Heterosexual

-- Bisexual

-- Homosexual

-- Transgendered

Human resources professionals say it's highly unusual for a company of BofA's size and stature to seek such information.

SPOKANE -- Gay activists in this staid Eastern Washington city are planning to create a neighborhood of gay-oriented homes, businesses and nightlife, which religious conservatives complain will be at odds with Spokane's family-oriented culture.

A gay district would signal that Spokane is tolerant and progressive, proponents contend, the type of community that can attract the so-called "creative class" that will build the economy of tomorrow.

"We're talking about an actual physical part of town we would like to establish as a gay district," said Marvin Reguindin, owner of a Spokane graphic design firm, who envisions an area similar to the Castro district of San Francisco or Capitol Hill in Seattle.

Lutherans on all rungs of the theological spectrum criticized the recently released Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Studies on Sexuality for being either misleading or oppressive, Thursday, Jan. 13, 2005.

The long awaited report, released Thursday, essentially called for no change to the church’s standards prohibiting both the ordination of active homosexuals and the blessing of same sex unions, but simultaneously urged bishops to refrain from disciplining those who broke the policies.

According to reformed leaders, the report was a muddled attempt to maintain unity in the 5-million member denomination by appeasing both sides of the debate.

About 50 municipal employees in Scottsdale and Tempe would no longer be able to extend health benefits to their domestic partners if activists succeed in their efforts to ban municipalities from offering such public benefits.

Tempe offers domesticpartner benefits to 32 employees, while 19 Scottsdale workers take advantage of the benefits. Neither city would give specifics about the number of those employees who are in same-sex or opposite-sex relationships.

The conservative Center for Arizona Policy, which opposes same-sex marriages, announced Thursday it would seek an amendment to the Arizona Constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. The initiative, targeted for 2006, also would prohibit domestic partners from receiving public benefits, including those offered to unmarried employees in heterosexual relationships.

(Richmond, Virginia) The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down an ancient and rarely enforced state law prohibiting sex between unmarried people.

The unanimous ruling strongly suggests that a separate anti-sodomy law also is unconstitutional, although that statute is not directly affected. The justices based their ruling on a U.S. Supreme Court decision voiding an anti-sodomy law in Texas.

"This case directly affects only the fornication law but makes it absolutely clear how the court would rule were the sodomy law before it," said Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Virginia.

(Atlanta, Georgia) The first step began today in what is expected to be a long trek to the Georgia Supreme Court over the legality of last November's vote on amending the state constitution to ban gay marriage.

Gay rights advocates maintain the ballot question was illegal because it contained two issues: one was the issue of same-sex marriage itself, the other a ban on civil unions.

Under the Georgia constitution a ballot measure may only deal with one issue, and only the question of marriage was put to voters.